In a recent interview with the Guardian, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman confirmed his decision to return the country to moderate Islam. The prince insisted that the conservative, extremist trend was a recent phenomenon in the Kingdom and that it went back to just 30 years ago. He added that it was born out of the climate created by the Iranian revolution.

Bin Salman did not hesitate to note that the kingdom’s former leaders failed to address the phenomenon and that he was determined to put an end to it. He said: "What occurred during the past thirty years was not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region was not the Middle East. In the wake of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, there emerged some people who wanted to copy that model in other countries. Saudi Arabia was one of those countries.

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Salman’s ’moderate Islam’: A Disneyland for robots, not an open society“We did not even know how to tackle it, and the problem spread across the entire world. Now is the time to get rid of it once and for all.”

Bin Salman added: “We are simply going back to what we used to follow, moderate Islam, the Islam that is open to the world and to other religions … We shall not waste thirty more years of our life in confronting extremists. We shall destroy them, now and immediately.”